sidebar of the people

I have become completely obsessed with a band I have just discovered. I'm sure everyone else in the world already knows about them, as I am usually behind the arc on these trends... but on the off-chance you haven't heard of them yet... they are called The Darkness and they are awesome! They are like an 80's glam rock band, and they have a great video that appears to be some kind of homage to Freddie Mercury and Queen. It's called "I Believe in a Thing Called Love". Check it out! Oh... and they are from the UK, so they must be cool! :)

Link of the Moment
It looks like this speculation on what a spaceship war in the Solar System might look like is about as finished as it's ever going to get. (Three parts.) Some interesting ideas, but it is so impossible to do "realistic" predictions such as this and have it look anything like what it actually ends up as.
There's always some little feature or technology, a "minor" change that changes everything.UPDATE: that's what I get for just publishing a link from the backlog without rereading it...as AuSkeptic points out, one of the coolest things about the link is the highlevel historical overview of Naval warfare here on Earth, and I forgot to mention that.

Observation of the Moment
"Scali" is a very intriguing name for a very mundane bread. It's such an evocative name that when it turns out to be white bread with seeds, its gotta be a disappointment.

Historical Culture of the Moment

John Bull and Uncle Sam...I hadn't heard much about the former gentleman, who is parallel in concept to Sam, though not as prevalent these days. From a Library of Congress exhibit on British-American relations. Do any other countries have semi-official personifications like these?